Proud Papa

My daughter and her mom returned last night with the purple t-shirted Alaska State champion Science Olympiad team after competing in the national event. They all looked pretty beat, and one of the coaches took ill on the plane ride back (get well soon Fred). Everyone is glad to be home. When we got back to the house, Daisy celebrated with 3 high speed corgi laps around the living room. We left unpacking for the next day and just went to bed.

Today, my blip is the silver medal Kelly and her partner Zachary won in the Balloon Launched Glider event. Their glider stayed aloft for 1min and 7 seconds from about 35 feet. They held onto first place most of the day, but the last entrant beat their time by 66/100 second. Regardless, that was an awesome showing for a pretty rag tag team from podunk Alaska given some of the powerhouse lower 48 competition.

I thought I was going easy on myself shooting the medal for my blip, but getting the lighting right on a hunk of metal is hard and required a good bit of experimentation to get it right. I ended up bouncing a flash upward off a big 4 foot white reflector over the medal.